I used MySQL before I understood it at the physical level, and now I'm using some other ones that I don't really understand. A MySQL/Postgres noob can get prett

I used MySQL before I understood it at the physical level, and now I'm using some other ones that I don't really understand. A MySQL/Postgres noob can get pretty far just knowing to avoid seq scans. It's not ideal, but it'll work. Understanding schema design is more important. The thing is, ORMs encourage bad schema design and get in the way of the SQL you want. I've seen entire projects ruined this way. I think the only valid reason for an ORM was before RDBMSes had json etc types. Maybe you had a table with very many cols that you just want to get/set, say a "user profile" table. This also contributed to the NoSQL fad. Nowadays you can throw that into one json col.